Mark Carney is a protest candidate. He was not elected for his policies, necessarily. He was elected for likeability as a contrast to Trudeau (who he advised informally). He was also elected for demeanor as a contrast to Pierre Poilievre, the 'Canadian Trump', who has, for the good of Canada, lost his seat. Good riddance!
Poilievre talked of change but he's been holding the same parliamentary seat since 2004. The people of Ottawa-Carleton and Bruce Fanjoy said, 'yes, change indeed!' And change they engendered!
Carney, for better or for worse, symbolizes calm, order and the status quo Trudeau had apparently compromised. Trudeau had made Canada 'unfamiliar.' On principle, status quo scares the hell out of me. But given Trump's menace, I'll give Carney the benefit of the doubt! After all, he talks like that smooth-talking uncle whose words make issues less painful!
But I'm not celebrating...yet. I'm not dismissing him either.
For those of us living at the margin and studying those who live at the margin, Carney's victory is something to approach cautiously. He is a man who has never done groceries. He has no clue how the average Canadian lives. He is now elected to learn what it means to be Canadian. The man had three passports. A true globalist.
He was recently called out about lying about his first call with Trump. He had said Trump 'respects Canada's sovereignty'. That was a lie. He failed to tell Canadians that Trump repeated the call for Canada to become the 51st state in their first phone call. Why lie to Canadians about such a fundamental issues?
Recently, he first stood by liberal candidate, Paul Chiang, who had called for a conservative candidate to be abducted and taken to the Chinese consulate for a bounty. Really? Chang would later resign as a candidate even after Carney stood by him!
I'm glad Carney won. No doubt. But I'm not enthused by his taking over in Ottawa...yet. He is too close to the centre that he risks becoming centre right. Poilievre even complained that Carney has copied his platform. Carney wants to be different from Trudeau so bad that he will risk pandering to the conservative, old guards within the liberal party. Yet, he was Trudeau's informal advisor. There are conservatives who find it 'respectable' to be called 'liberal.' Carney was once asked by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a conservative that molded Poilievre, to be finance minister.
Celebrate. But celebrate with caution. Carney is a neoliberal, a neocon of Obama variety! I'll wait to be impressed! I work with children and youth and my daughter plans to attend university in Canada. I'm yet to see a policy on Carney's platform that would give them something about which to smile.
Dr. Jok Madut (left), Dr. Bol Mel (middle) and Dr. Aldo Ajou Deng (right)
The social media statements by Dr. Jok
Madut and Dr. Uncle Aldo Ajou are confusing. I think they will have to explain
the following to South Sudanese.
Dr. Jok said that what is being discussed about Bol Mel is based on assumptions
and hatred of the man. He also said that Bol Mel has not expressed any desire
to replace Kiir. And that Kiir has not said he's preparing Bol Mel to replace
him. I will give Dr. Jok the benefit of the doubt because he shared these views
on social media where most of us are not always serious and measured when
sharing our views.
I have come to know Dr. Jok as far more
sophisticated and self-aware than the status being referenced reveals.
Here is my dilemma. I’m not sure if Jok is saying that for us to accept the
argument that Bol Mel regards himself as the heir apparent to President Kiir
then he must say explicitly, "I want to replace President Kiir!"?
I will wait for Dr. Jok to explain
himself. Bol Mel will have to be a complete dodo to say publicly he will
replace President Kiir!
No!
Bol Mel has shown a meticulous ruthlessness,
a systematicity of a miskiin sekin! The English calls such a person a
silent killer.
Also, there is never a case where politicians are clear about their intentions.
Facts and politicians are like Trump and Truth, water and oil!
Since Bol Mel was decreed in, he's been like Kiir's right-hand man. He stood
beside President Kiir when the man from Kampala came to South Sudan. He was the
one sent to Ethiopia to smooth things over with the New Flower [Addis Ababa]
after J1 prioritized the man from Kampala over Dr. Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia.
When he was appointed VP, Bol verbally, explicitly targeted Riek Machar, a
member of the presidency. He also asked Madam Nyandeeng not to abandon Kiir!
I'm not sure what he meant by that! He also mentioned that he would get
involved in security issues. We must ask ourselves why?
Now, Riek is in detention and Upper Nile and Jonglei are conflagrations. That
Bol Mel may be Kiir's successor is more of a presumption than an assumption.
Enter Bol Mel as VP and boom! there is money for salary! This is what late
Steve Jobs called connecting "the dots moving backwards."
How about Uncle Dr. Aldo?
He said Kiir cannot just make Bol Mel his successor, arguing that SPLM has
succession structures. He's kidding, right?
Is it not the same Kiir who embarrassed Kuol Manyang, imposed Peter Lam Both
and then tossed him, demoted Wani Igga to Secretary General and then made Bol
Mel one of the deputy chairs of the SPLM? Did anyone in the SPLM make a
whimpering sound?
Note this. If the president goes abroad for
state visits, article 1.6 section 1.6.4 of the Revitalized Peace Agreement says
that the first vice president becomes the acting president on a temporary
basis. When both the president and the first vice president are absent, the
president appoint one of the four vice presidents as acting president.
Since Riek is now in detention, let’s see
who President Kiir would appoint as acting president. Vice President Nyandeeng?
Vice President Josephine Lagu? Vice president Taban Deng Gai?
We will see…
Note that section 1.6.5
says that if the president is mentally or physically incapacitated then the
next president will be selected by the party of the president. Dr. Riek cannot
become president through the revitalized agreement of 2018. Perhaps Uncle
Doctor has a point here. If SPLM leaders are no longer afraid of Kiir then they
may ignore his wishes and pretend SPLM has structures to respect.
But Kiir is, we are told, not physically and mentally incapacitated now. When
it comes to succession, please don’t try Kiir! Try Kiir...just try...!
So Uncle Aldo is saying Kiir will, somehow, respect rules, laws and
regulations when it comes to who is to succeed him? Come on Uncle Doctor! Has
anyone ever defied Kiir? Pagan, Nyandeeng and Riek did! Where are they now?
Madam Nyandeeng is protected by the ghost and the liberation aura of John
Garang. She became VP through G [X] not through Kiir’s SPLM.
Uncle Doctor also said that we cannot blame Bol Mel for the corruption inherent
in awarding contracts. Bol Mel is just a businessman, he said. Is this an
implicit endorsement of corruption?
So Bol Mel is our VP but we should not hold him legally and morally
accountable? Is that what we are now supposed to expect from our public
officials? "Blame the government! I knew there was corruption but what did
you expect me to do?"
Folks, Bol Mel is a public figure, for better or for worse. Allow us to unpack
his public life! He comes with violence and money…and the slick, efficient smoothness
of a high-end gigolo!
____________
Kuir ë Garang (PhD) is the editor of The Philosophical Refugee (TPR).
Since
I posted the video
commentary about the Rwandan incident, several things have become clear. Both the
Rwandan police and the South Sudanese Student leadership in Rwanda have noted
that the violent incident that was wrongly attributed to South Sudanese
students has, if anything, to do with South Sudanese.
As
the president of South Sudanese Students Association in Rwanda, Saleh
Mohammed Adam, has said in his
interview with Juba-based Eye Radio, “the incident happened on the 27th
of December, so we actually have seen the footage, and I told them clearly when
we tried to view the footage …and in the actual truth we found out these people
who fought Rwandans…are not South Sudanese.”
He
added, “I have called one of the police who was in the investigation process of
the incident [and] he told me I was right. They said the issue has been already
solved so it was just misinformation and misidentification.”
This
is why it is crucial that we wait to hear all the facts surrounding the incident
before we respond as to who is at fault. Both Rwandans and South Sudanese
automatically assumed that South Sudanese are to blame. They attributed
violence, a natural fact of every society, to be a natural propensity of South
Sudanese as people.
While
the South Sudanese leadership did
not respond to the incident, the Rwandan
authorities did.The Rwandan police and
the ministry of foreign affairs did not buy into the narrative that South
Sudanese are naturally violent. Rwandan authorities have shown a sense of
leadership South Sudan’s foreign ministry has not.
Boniface
Rutikanga, the spokesperson for the Rwandan
national police, cautioned the public against using social media as the source
of facts and truth.
“People should not be worried about what is
going on over the social media but should learn to understand that the fact not
always comes from the social media” [sic].
Advising
against targeting South Sudanese, Mr. Rutikanga said that the incident is a normal
event that can happen between any communities living in Rwanda or among Rwandan
themselves.
“What
happened”
he added, “was just a case that could
happened to any another community. It is normal. It could happen between
Rwandans among themselves or could have happened between one community and
another” [sic].
Mr.
Rutikanga assured the public that neither South Sudanese nor other foreign
nationals living in Rwanda have violently targeted Rwandans.
“…there is nothing special that would be
called that South Sudanese were targeting Rwandans or certain foreign group
targeting Rwandans. There were no premeditation of doing that, so let me just
assure people that there is nothing problematic.”
Responding
to the hateful vitriol directed at South Sudanese by Rwandans on the social
media, The
New Times warned on January 1,
2025, against current and historical dangers of othering. that “Young [Rwandan]
people should be taught about the dangers of otherness, especially prejudicial
and stereotypical. It starts off as just that, but the cost is too high. Crimes
committed should be reported to the right institutions and dealt with legally.”
The
New Times added that “Inciting hate against a
specific people has no place in Rwanda today or tomorrow. Our hospitality
should reflect the remarkably diverse society we have built over the years.”
The
New Times was echoing what the Rwandan Minister of
Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Olivier Nduhungihere, posted
on X on December 30, 2024, about Rwandan
values of unity, rule of law and respect for diversity of the people living in
Rwanda.
These
remarks underscore what I said in the video; that, at the time, we did not know
what happened. I said that we should wait for the police to do the
investigation to find out what really happened.
I
also, as a cautionary reminder, showed a video of South Sudanese being maligned
in the Australian media. Some of the videos shown in Australia as South
Sudanese youth engaging in acts of violence turned out to be non-South
Sudanese.
As it turns out, the Australian case is
similar to the Rwandan incident as facts start to come out. It is pent-up
hatred meant to tarnish South Sudanese.
It
is therefore vital that we wait for facts before we share our opinions in spaces
that do not have editorial oversights. X, formerly known as Twitter, is a
sociopolitical wild west.
While
it is prudent that we respond to reports when they arise, it is also crucial
that we show restraint and avoid self-denigrations.
I
am not, of course, saying that South Sudanese do not engage in acts of violence
in Australia or in East Africa. I only suggest that we blame South Sudanese
when they make mistakes. As South Sudanese, we should not join self-blame and
denigration before we get all the facts.
We
have started to see ourselves through the prisms of those who have no respect
for us.
___
Kuir
ë Garang (PhD), is the editor of the Philosophical Refugee (TPR)
Photo Courtesy: Office of the President of South Sudan
January 3, 2025
It is good to be optimistic. It helps you focused to confront adversities in life. There is nothing wrong with that attitude when you are self-motivating.
But when a president tells citizens to be optimistic without giving them reasonable political or economic plans to be hopeful, he risks trivializing their pain and desperation.
This is what President Kiir of South Sudan has done in his recent New Year's message.
South Sudanese have gone for months without salaries. Instead of apologizing to the people of South Sudan, or tell them how the nonpayment of salaries will be addressed in the new year, the president thanked South Sudanese for their patience, resilience, patriotism, and submission.
Asking South Sudanese to be optimistic when the president presented no tangible agenda for the resolution of what has become a chronic problem in the country is to insult the people of South Sudan.
Asking South Sudanese to work for free for more than a year, and expecting them to continue on waiting patiently, is risky. It borders on creating a slave labor nation, as someone has noticed.
Admitting economic problems as the president did in his new year's message on December 31, 2024 is reasonable.
But it is not followed by a plan. President Kiir only asks South Sudanese to embrace uncertainty in perpetuity. A diseased, hungry, flooded, unsafe, and despondent populace cannot build a country. And it can by no means turn into a state-building human resource.
South Sudanese are exhausted. They have been taken advantage of by South Sudanese leaders under President Kiir and the SPLM.
The people of South Sudan need more than pastoral inspirations. The youth of South Sudan need programs that would allow them to see and embrace a brighter future the president invokes without a plan.
The president only invokes a brighter future like a traditional seer or a false Christian prophet.
Reminding South Sudanese of the challenges they already live through is to be oblivious of the living conditions of the people. It is self-absolution.
President Kiir is a political leader. He is not a priest taking confessionals from his congregation.
He should deal in facts, figures and strategic plans.
Statements such as "the government will prioritize" or "I am...directing that the Ministry of Agriculture double its effort" are vacuous personal directives.
The president should speak forcefully in terms of government's plans not personal directives. He should own failures not deflect them or speak in terms of collective mistakes. He is the president.
When one reads the tone and the messaging in the president's speeches and addresses, he speaks like a middle-management executive who takes orders from the CEO.
That "We in government of today must do our best" or "We must ensure..." are not reassuring. They are abdications of responsibility to the people of South Sudan.
If there are economic challenges, and indeed there are, then what is the government's strategy to resolve the problem? Not mere personal directives. Tangible, documented strategies. This is missing.
Asking South Sudanese to continue to work for free is a risky affair. It borders on slave labor.
This must stop!
_________________
Kuir ë Garang (PhD), is the editor of the Philosophical Refugee (TPR)
The youth in Africa, which is by far the continent with the youngest population, 70% being under 30 years, are like exploitable things used by political leaders to decorate themselves. This is not always a palatable adornment. They are either their political muscles, conduits for their ethnicized polemics, or cheerleaders of their stayist agenda.
I see this on many South Sudanese fora and social media platforms.
But African youth are listening, watching...peacefully. Demoralized and devalued as they are, they are still the future. And they know it.
As such, African leaders should not be too complacent. Pre-empting any hints of protests with massive military deployments is also not the way to go. Shutting down youth meetings for fear of these meetings morphing into anti-government movements is not also the way to go.
The youth may not liberate themselves by picking up guns and flee to the bush. But they know the power of the social media and its importance in galvanized THE STREETS.
In South Sudan, the youth is unemployed and their parents go for months, even years, without being paid. Protesting, the most democratic means for the expression of grievance, is dangerous, even fatal. The youth of South Sudan and their parents suffering in a silent indignity.
But the youth in Africa, even in South Sudan, are a sleeping giant. Kenya has shown African leaders that they are no longer willing to be tools for the exploitation of the people and the mouths for the spread of divisive ideas.
They want improvements in their political culture, their economies and political leadership. It is that simple.
African leaders take the youth for granted. Kenya and Nigeria have now seen the consequence of ageist arrogance. They must appreciate what the youth are doing to change their countries for better. Not all Gen Zs have been zombified and stupefied by Instagram and Tik Tok as some politicians like to believe.
Listen to them. The appropriate responses is change in policies not guns and tanks.
Here is the importance of the protests. Instead of fleeing their countries out of frustration to die in the Mediterranean see like thousands of African youth who continue to defy the deathly Sahara and what some commenters have called the new middle passage, protesting African youth have decided to challenge the historical amnesia of their political class.
Africans leaders cannot have it both ways. They cannot ignore the ones dying on their way to Europe and expect the ones who have remained at home to be quiet about what made those youth brave death.
The youth do no like to protest. They like a better living standard.
It would be foolhardy for African leaders to mock them. Museveni, stuck in the past, as as entitled and blinded by power as former US president, Donald Trump, seems to assume he is going to live forever.
He uses the police and the army to intimidate the youth and opposition figures. But how long will that last? The army and the police will one day realize that they work for the people. And the emperor will be seen for what he is: Naked!
In South Sudan, the political class is reading from Museveni's authoritarian book. Any time there is a mustering about protests, the army floods the streets with tanks and armored cars. Yes, armored tanks. The South Sudanese army is not used to protect civilians. It is used to intimidate.
But how long will the youth of South Sudan suffer in dehumanizing silence? How long will South Sudanese leaders rely on divisive politics to prevent youth from reminding the political class that the future is the youth not men and women in their 60s, 70s and 80s acting like they still have the next fifty years to rule?
Since 2005, the political class in South Sudan transitioned from liberation-mindedness to power politics. In power politics, priorities are about parties and individuals. The future of the country becomes secondary if it is at all part of political conversation.
Between 2005 and 2011, the ruling party, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), failed to transition into a conventional political party. Leaders could not agree on succession.
They kept on postponing conventions, normalizing postponement. The consequence was the war in 2013. The culture of postponement has now becomes part of the peace agreement. The elections also seem to be heading that way.
Meanwhile, the country is falling apart. Salaries have not been paid for months. A recent report by the Associated Press shows that civil servants are leaving their jobs for menial work. Some have resorted to waitressing while others have become charcoal salesmen.
But the president either does not care or he has no idea what he is doing. Between 2020 and 2024, South Sudan has had six finance ministers.
Until recently, the president kept the public guessing about the reason for which he fires finance ministers, some of whom lasting for less than a year. Apparently, he is looking for the right person. The South Sudanese finance ministry has become a matter of trial and error.
The president may have not realized that the reason why institutions vet candidates is to avoid aimless and error. Vetting and interviews are meant to find the most qualified or the most appropriate Candidate for the job.
A recent selection of a running mate by the presumptive Democratic President Candidate, Kamala Harris, is an example. Harris vetted qualified candidates and settled for Minnesota Governor, Tim Walz. Harris believed Walz is the best Candidate for the kind of the presidency she hope to run should she win in November.
President Kiir needs to learn this. Vetting candidates based on experience, past achievements, education, and fit removes the needs to hire candidates blindly. The president can even outsource the vetting process to ensure a company with experience hiring qualified candidate does the vetting.
But we know that doing so may lead to the hiring of someone who is good for the job but bad for those who have captured the state governing apparatuses. So for the president to say he is looking for the person to fix the economic when he is not exercising the judgement required to find one is dishonest.
Today, the president and the ruling class are comfortable. But they should note that the youth are watching what is happening in Kenya and Nigeria. The African Spring is afoot.
South Sudanese leaders should not be complacent. The youth are peaceful. But they are not mentally dead.
INSPIRING SOUTH SUDANESE
__
Kuir ë Garang (PhD) is the editor of The Philosophical Refugee. Follow on X: @kuirthiy.
'Garang also reiterated the importance of education to the red army as future leaders in his speech to Sudanese refugees in Itang Refugee Camp (also in Western Ethiopia) in 1988. Garang told civilians that Southern and Western Sudanese were excluded from power in Khartoum because they are said to be uneducated. “Why are they not educated?” he asked. He added that “this is why we have built schools for the red army because they are the future generation. No one will say in the future that they are not educated.”'
As we yet again commemorate another May 16th, I think about the future of South Sudan through these three generational groups: The SPLA generation, the red army generation, and the youth (as conventionally defined by the United Nations and the African Union).
When
I read in Frantz Fanon’s TheWretched of the Earth that “Each
generation must out of relative obscurity discover its mission, fulfil it, or
betray it”, I wonder about the youth in South Sudan and my generation (the red
army generation). With the current political and economic situation in South
Sudan, the red army generation seems to have betrayed its generational
mission.
But
is this generation to blame? First, what is this generation and why it is
important?
The
red army generation, called the lost boys of Sudan
in the United States where some of them resettled as refugees in early 2000s,
were born in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. To the Southern rebels
(1983-2005)—the Sudan’s People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the Sudan
People’s Liberation Army (SPLA)—the red army generation was to furnish Sudan
with disciplined, educated post-liberation leaders.
Of
course, SPLA recruited
some of these boys as combat infantry in the 1990s. These older boys, called
Jesh el-assuot (black army) informally because they were of fighting age
according to the SPLA, were hardly adults as conventionally
defined. It is however important to note
that the SPLA leadership believed in the education of this generation. With all
their short-comings, which
are very well documented, SPLA leaders did not blindly use them all as child
soldiers. The future was a haunting presence.
While
the use of child soldiers must be condemned, and rightly so, it is important to
understand the cultural and the survivalist context in which SPLA recruited and
inducted them as child soldiers. This cultural dimension, while not necessarily
acceptable per se, must be factored into any analysis of South Sudanese
liberation history and all its complex dimensions. It cannot be ignored, or oversimplified,
if the present status of the youth and the red army generation in South Sudan
is to be properly contextualized.
The SPLA
senior leadership also understood that a revolutionary agenda without any
strategic plan for the young generation is foolhardy. Speaking in 1988 to Jesh el-amer
(the red army) in Pinyudo Refugee Camp
in Western Ethiopia, John Garang de Mabior, the co-founder of SPLM/SPLA and its
ideological
architect, said that the duty of the red army generation is “to
re-build the country.”Garang added that
“my responsibility and the responsibility of my generation will be to dismantle
Old Sudan…we will raze it to the ground.”
Garang
also reiterated the importance of education to the red army as future leaders
in his speech to Sudanese refugees in Itang Refugee Camp
(also in Western Ethiopia) in 1988. Garang told the civilians that Southern and
Western Sudanese were excluded from power in Khartoum because they are said to
be uneducated. “Why are they not educated?” he asked. He added that “this is
why we have built schools for the red army because they are the future
generation. No one will say in the future that they are not educated.”
The
importance of education for the red army is also underscored by the decision by
the SPLA to send about 600 young men and women to Cuba
in the mid-1980s for education. Another important educational program
encouraged by the SPLA leadership to educate the red army generation produced
scholars of Face
Foundation of Polotaka, Eastern Equatoria.
Additionally,
in refugee camps (Itang,
Pinyudo,
Dima,
Kakuma,
etc) where the red army settled, SPLA appointed leaders to supervise them. They
emphasized the importance of education to aid agencies providing relief
services in these camps. On a personal note, I completed elementary and high
school in Kakuma Refugee Camp due to SPLM’s emphasis on education. It is with
this emphasis on education that a prominent SPLA commander, after talking to my
mother in 1995 in Mangalatore
Displace Camp, accepted to take me to
Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. Schools in Mangalatore were poor. Because of the itinerant
nature of internally displaced persons, I found it difficult to benefit from
constantly interrupted schooling.
DR. JOHN GARANG DE MABIOR ON LEADERSHIP, SERVICE PROVISION, AND ACCOUNTABILITY
With
this emphasis on education and the red army as future leaders, why then are the
youth and the red army generation marginalized in South Sudan?
The
obvious answer is what SPLM leaders have become. Instead of building an
inclusive economy and democracy, or allowing the red army generation to play
that role, SPLM has built a self-enrichment kleptocracy
where a coterie of powerful political and military elites siphon state
resources to foreign banks. Within this system, the youth is seduced
into it or marginalized.
This predatory “gun
class”, as South Sudanese scholar an
former minister Majak D’Agoot calls them, has become callously parasitic on
state resources.So the conditions in
which the youth and the red army generation could fulfil their generational
mission, in
state-building for instance, are
non-existent.
As
D’Agoot has noted, “SPLA has morphed into a degenerative gun-toting aristocracy
that straddles the sociocultural, political, and economic spheres like a
colossus.” This has enabled a predatory elitism, an elite-centred economic
system of reciprocity. They have made it the political
and economic culture in the country. The youth and the red army generation joins
them because it pays. Others join this predatory elite on ethno-centric basis. The
generational mission has become an inconvenience or a threat
to personal safety.
To
stop the gun class from money-laundering, the United States sent Sigal
Mandelker, the Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial
Intelligence, to Kenya and Uganda, which have become money-laundering hubs for South
Sudanese gun class. After Mandelker’s visit, money laundering continues. State-building
and service provision have been abandoned.
Instead
of being allowed to fulfil their generational mission, the youth and the red
army generation face
arbitrary arrests, tortures at national security secret locations, and the unexplained
disappearances. Frustrations has also
caused self-destructive decisions for this generation. The rebellion and
subsequent assassination by the South Sudanese army of businessman and
philanthropist, Kerubino Wol, and the arrest by the FBI of Dr. Peter Biar Ajak,
resulted from these generational frustrations. It is the attempt by the youth
and the red army generation to fulfil their generational missions that puts
them in trouble with the South Sudanese national security.
Those
in positions of power are appointed through nepotistic arrangements or through
political cronyisms. They are mere tokens without real power. For instance, the
deputy governor of Jonglei State, Atong Kuol Manyang, is the daughter of a
powerful former SPLA commander, Kuol Manyang Juuk. Kuol is also a senior
advisor to President Kiir. The deputy Mayor of the city of Juba, Thiik Thiik
Mayardit, is the nephew of President Salva Kiir.
The
governor of Jonglei State, Mr. Denay Jock Chagor, the national minister of
health, Ms. Yolanda Awel Deng Juach, and the national minister of petroleum,
Mr. Kang Chol, are among the red army generation who were appointed through the
revitalized agreement for the resolution of the conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCISS)
signed by SPLM-In-Government and SPLM-In-Opposition in 2018. SPLM leaders find
it nearly impossible to appoint the youth and the red army generation into positions
of power on merit.
Co-opted
South Sudanese youth and the red army generation must therefore reject SPLM’s predatory
elitism however solvent. Otherwise, corrupt, and self-centred leaders in their
60s, 70s, and 80s will continue to be the past, the present, and the future of
the country.
Top: Dr. Peter Biar Ajak (left) and President Salva Kiir (right)
Below: Minister of Petroleum, Mr. Puot K. Chol (left) and late Mr. Kerubino Wol (right)
In
South Sudan, the youth is marginalized and
confused. These are obvious realities to
South Sudanese at home and abroad. The reason for this confusion and
marginality is, however, not so apparent. We may fault culturally inspired political
ageism. But that is easy.
So,
making sense of how political ageism marginalizes the youth needs more than the
proposition that ageism is to blame. The youth themselves enable the system
that keeps them at the margin of power and decision-making in the country.
Of
course, the structural dynamics of youth economic and political marginality,
which is outside youth control, is not something I downplay. The youth are,
however, not helpless bystanders in the ageism power matrix. They are complicit
as pawns of the elite and ethnic chauvinists.
The
youth, who are ethnic chauvinists or wannabe-elite make political ageism
effective and marginalizing. These youth do not mind septuagenarians or
octogenarians monopolizing politics and economics if these youth join, or are
favored by, the political and economic elite. South Sudanese scholar, Majak D’Agoot, has
referred to this youth-marginalizing South Sudanese elite as the “gun
class.”
An Analysis of the land issue in the Equatorias
In
this case the youth support the gun class, however incompetent and corrupt,
because these leaders come from their tribe. They complain that the older generation is not
giving the youth a share of power. However, these marginalized youth support
leaders who tell 40-year-olds that they are “leaders of tomorrow.” For instance, some local youth associations in
South Sudan are headed by “youth” in their mid-40s. This is why, on
April 17, 2023, Daniel Mwaka, a South Sudanese youth leader, suggested that the
youth age bracket in South Sudan be delimited at 35.
